The day after Kristy’s Krushers’ practice, Charlie brought Emily over to my house for a tutoring session. Honestly, Charlie ought to go into the chauffering business. He could probably make a fortune.

“Hiya, Miss Emily,” I said as I opened the door and Charlie set Emily on our front steps.

“Hi, Ko-ee,” replied Emily. She smiled. Emily was beginning to greet people and to call them by name, and she pronounced the names as well as she could.

“Thanks, Claud,” said Charlie. “I’ll be back for Emily in about an hour, okay?”

“Perfect,” I replied. “See you.”

“’Bye, Emily,” said Charlie as he started down the steps.

“’Bye, Shar-ee.” Not a whimper from Emily. She’d been to my house plenty of times by then and knew that Charlie (or someone) would come back for her. Her fears were starting to disappear.

“Okay, Emily,” I said, ushering her inside. “Let’s go to my room.”

We always worked in my room. I had decided to follow a routine for Emily, just as if she were in school and always went to the same classroom.

So we trudged up the stairs to the second floor. (Emily is not a very fast stair-climber.) We passed Janine’s room.

“Hi, Nee-nee!” called Emily cheerfully.

Who could resist that? Not even Janine.

“Emily!” my sister exclaimed, and handed her a balloon, which she’d obviously been saving for Emily’s next visit.

“What do you say?” I whispered to Emily.

“Fank-oo,” she answered promptly.

Then, never missing a teaching opportunity, I said, “Emily, what color is your balloon?”

“Bwow up!” replied Emily.

“Yes, but what color is it?”

“Red. Bwow up!”

Since she was right, I blew it up immediately. Then we continued down the hall and into my room, where I settled Emily on the floor. I put the balloon on my desk. “You can have it when Charlie comes back,” I told Emily. (If I let her play with it, she’d never be able to concentrate.)

For the next hour, Emily worked hard. By now, she was an old pro at matching, could name quite a few colors, and could identify shapes. She couldn’t say the words for the shapes, though. Most of them were just too hard. Once, I asked her to say “triangle” and she looked at me as if I were crazy.

Today’s lesson, I had decided, would be on counting. From watching Sesame Street, Emily already knew how to count to ten, but the words didn’t mean anything to her. She’d just haul off and say (very fast), “One-two-fee-foe-five-sick-seben-eight-nine-ten.” Now I needed to show her what those words meant.

I placed three blue triangles on the floor in front of Emily.

“Bwoo!” she said.

“That’s great, Em,” I told her. “They are blue, and they are all the same — they’re triangles — but how many are there?”

Before Emily had a chance to get frustrated, I took her finger and pointed to each one, saying clearly, “One … two … three!”

“Foe-five-sick-seben-eight-nine-ten!” continued Emily triumphantly.

“No, let’s start over.”

So we did. I added another triangle and we counted to four. That afternoon we counted circles, squares, Emily’s fingers and toes, my shoes, some pencils, and finally — just as Charlie was arriving — we counted one piece of candy, which I gave Emily as a reward for her hard work. She was definitely not a counter yet, but she was on her way.

When Emily had left, I quietly closed the door to my room. I could hear the clickety-clack of Janine’s computer and knew she was hard at work, and probably a million miles away (mentally), but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had decided to call Wyoming, and I didn’t want Janine to overhear.

It had taken me a long, long time to work up the nerve to make the Wyoming call (or calls), and now I was ready. If I didn’t call, I’d never find out about Resa Ho, and that would drive me crazy someday. I was pretty sure of it.

I got out the phone book. I looked up the area code for Wyoming, hoping desperately that there would be only one. There was. It was 307. I didn’t pause. I plunged ahead and dialed (307)555-1212.

“What city, please?” asked the operator.

“Cuchara,” I replied.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Go ahead? Oh. She meant what number did I want.

“I need the phone number for the Hos.”

“The Hos?”

“Yes, Ho. H-O.”

“There are three Hos in Cuchara, ma’am,” said the operator patiently. “Do you know the party’s address or first name?”

The party?

“Um, is there a George Ho?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, I have no such listing.”

“Oh. Well, could you give me the numbers for the three Hos that you do have?”

The operator then gave me the numbers for a Mary Ho, for Sydney and Sheila Ho, and for Barry and Patty Ho.

“Thank you,” I said, and hung up.

I just kept forging ahead. I dialed Mary Ho first. The phone rang twelve times. No answer. She wasn’t home.

Next I tried Sydney and Sheila Ho. A woman answered on the first ring! And then — I swear, I don’t know where this idea came from — I found myself saying, “Congratulations! Your daughter Resa has been chosen as the winner in the —”

“Excuse me,” said the woman, “but I don’t have a daughter named Resa. My daughter is Pamela.”

“Is she thirteen?” I asked briskly.

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” I pretended to be puzzled. “Do you know of a thirteen-year-old girl in Cuchara whose name is Resa?”

“No.” The woman sounded irritated.

“Too bad,” I said. “I mean, about your daughter. She would have been the winner of a twenty-one-inch color television and a VCR.”

Then I hung up. I called Barry and Patty Ho and tried the same trick. But the boy who answered the phone said he was fourteen and had two younger brothers.

I tried Mary Ho again. Still no answer.

Then I dialed Stacey. “Guess what,” I said. “I’ve found my birth mother.”

“You’re kidding!” Stacey sounded astonished.

I explained what had happened when I’d called Wyoming. I said that by the process of elimination, Mary Ho must be my mother.

After quite a bit of silence, Stacey said, “Claudia, believe me when I say this. I really think you may be adopted. But I do not think that Mary Ho is necessarily your birth mother. In the first place, you didn’t talk to her. For all you know, she’s only twenty-one years old. In the second place, what makes you so sure you were born in Stoneybrook?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems logical. Once I heard a news story about a woman who gave birth to a baby she couldn’t keep, so the doctor who delivered the baby adopted him. That baby would have been born in the same town where his birth mother had lived. Anyway, think about it. I’m like no one else in my family. I even look different. I think maybe I’m only half-Asian. I think —” I began to cry.

“Claud, slow down. You’re jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Look, everyone is different, and not everyone fits into her family, or his family. I’m the only McGill with diabetes. And think how different Jessi and Becca Ramsey are. And look at Nicky Pike, for heaven’s sake. Talk about not fitting into your family. His brothers tease him and he doesn’t like to play with his sisters.”

I sniffed. “I guess you’re right,” I said.

“The thing is,” Stacey went on, “you’re not going to feel better until you know the truth. You don’t even know for sure that you’re adopted.”

“But how am I going to find out? I don’t know how to search anymore.”

“Ask your parents,” said Stacey flatly.

“They’ll never tell me the truth.”

“Why are you so convinced of that? They told you the truth when Mimi was sick. They’ve told you the truth about plenty of things. Ask them. You have to confront them.”

I let out a shaky breath. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to them after dinner.”